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A Chicago Tribune 'Best Books of 2014'New York Times Bestseller
Longlisted for The Man Booker Prize
Longlisted for the National Book Award

The National Book Award–winning author of The Echo Maker delivers his most emotionally charged novel to date, inspired by the myth of Orpheus.

"If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century…he'd probably be the Herman Melville of Moby-Dick. His picture is that big," wrote Margaret Atwood (New York Review of Books). Indeed, since his debut in 1985 with Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, Richard Powers has been astonishing readers with novels that are sweeping in range, dazzling in technique, and rich in their explorations of music, art, literature, and technology.

In Orfeo, Powers tells the story of a man journeying into his past as he desperately flees the present. Composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab—the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find music in surprising patterns—has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive. As an Internet-fueled hysteria erupts, Els—the "Bioterrorist Bach"—pays a final visit to the people he loves, those who shaped his musical journey. Through the help of his ex-wife, his daughter, and his longtime collaborator, Els hatches a plan to turn this disastrous collision with the security state into a work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around them. The result is a novel that soars in spirit and language by a writer who “may be America’s most ambitious novelist” (Kevin Berger, San Francisco Chronicle).

Book Details

Paperback

September 2014

ISBN 978-0-393-34984-9

5.5 × 8.3 in
/ 400 pages

Sales Territory: Worldwide including Singapore and Malaysia, but excluding the British Commonwealth.

Other Formats

Endorsements & Reviews

“Powers is prodigiously talented, he writes lyrical prose, has a seductive sense of wonder and is an acute observer of social life.” — Jim Holt, The New York Times Book Review

“Powers’s talent for translating avant-garde music into engrossing vignettes on the page is inexhaustible. Els’s obsession with avant-garde, which isolates him from everyone he loves, becomes the very thing that aligns him with the reader.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred review

“The earmarks of the renowned novelist’s work are here… but rarely have his novels been so tightly focused and emotionally compelling.” — Kirkus, Starred review

“Bravo, Richard Powers, for hitting so many high notes with Orfeo and contributing to the fraction of books that really matter.” — Heller McAlpin, NPR

“Orfeo reveals how a life, and the narrative of a life, accumulates, impossibly, infinitely, from every direction…. In this retelling of the Orpheus myth Powers also manages enchantment.” — Scott Korb, Slate

“Orfeo… establishes beyond any doubt that the novel is very much alive.” — Troy Jollimore, Chicago Tribune

“Magnificent and moving.” — David Ulin, The Los Angeles Times

“For sheer bravado in constructing sentences, few authors of contemporary fiction can surpass Powers…One of his finest yet.” — Ted Gioia, The San Francisco Chronicle

“Powers’ writing is complex and heady without being head-achy, and his synesthetic descriptions of finding melodies in the mundane are full of their own kind of music.” — Keith Staskiewicz, Entertainment Weekly